Hubris Maximus
Faiz Siddiqui
HarperCollins
Pp 336, Rs 599
At a moment when America’s tech gods are more influential than ever, Hubris Maximus is a cautionary tale about the pitfalls of lionising magnetic leaders. The Washington Post journalist Faiz Siddiqui offers a gripping, detailed portrait of a singularly messy and lucrative period in Elon Musk’s career, as well as a case study in the power of using one’s platform to shape the public narrative in a world that can’t turn away from its screens.
What You Do Is Who You Are
Ben Horowitz
HarperCollins
Pp 288, Rs 699
The times and circumstances in which people were raised often shape them—yet a few leaders have managed to shape their times. In this follow-up to The Hard Thing About Hard Things, Ben Horowitz turns his attention to a question crucial to every organisation—How do you create and sustain the culture you want? This book is a journey through cultures ancient to modern, spotlighting models of leadership and culture-building.
Proto
Laura Spinney
HarperCollins
Pp 336, Rs 599
A language was born between Europe and Asia as the planet emerged from the last ice age. This ancient tongue soon exploded out of its cradle, changing and fragmenting as it went, until its offsprings were spoken from Scotland to China. Today, these constitute the world’s largest language family. The book retraces the Indo-European odyssey across continents and millennia to answer the question of how one ancient language went global.
The Madhouse
Gyan Chaturvedi, Punarvasu Joshi
Niyogi Books
Pp 458, Rs 595
The Madhouse is an allegorical novel that chronicles the jarring transformations occurring in the psyche of Indian society by the onslaught of liberalisation in the 1990s. It is in this reign of the free-market economy and excessive consumption that the nameless characters of The Madhouse find themselves. The book captures the subtle as well as profound changes related to people’s psyche, belief systems, notions of honour and self-respect, among others.
My Name is Jasmine
Shashi Warrier
Simon & Schuster
Pp 320, Rs 499
This is a dark political tale set in contemporary India. The protagonist wakes up in a hospital ward unaware of how she got there. Through police interrogation, she regains her memory and, in the process, we discover more about her troubled past. She befriends a lawyer and therapist, but can they help discover her real identity? The book depicts the current conflicts raging through the country’s heartland bringing out stories which are often overlooked in contemporary Indian fiction.